the cradle
by electric caterpillar
Summary: Toph's encounter with Iroh, revisited.


_ Infancy's the tender fountain_

_ Power may with beauty flow,_

_ Mother's first to guide the streamlets,_

_ From them souls unresting grow-_

_ Grow on for the good or evil,_

_ Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;_

_ For the hand that rocks the cradle_

_ Is the hand that rules the world._

* * *

The man stalking her was broad and strong and of indeterminate age - adult, with many deep creases in his skin, but holding himself and moving with spry vivacity not observed by her in old men, depressing the topsoil with a gentle, considerate step which expressed duplicity or intense decency of disposition. His feet were large, calloused, descending from ankles solid as iron, but the arch was indulgently voluptuously high and tread as delicate as if anticipating silk slipper and plush carpet.

Toph realized whoever-he-was must be, like her, fabulously wealthy. An unlikely bandit, like her.

The entirety of her study of the predator occurred within the instant it required her to lift her heel and the hackles of the earth. Her thesis she delivered to him with the flat of her foot and an arrow of slate.

* * *

"Here is your tea," drawled Iroh, passing the crude ceramic cup blooming steam over the glow of flowering fire into the fingers of the vicious girl-child's. She clasped the cup to her breast to appreciate the heat and scent and looked beyond him, beyond the hill, into the abandoned dusk-painted fields with an expression of grace and gratitude coloring her troubles, puckered brow and fading gaze, a beguiling baby look he understood from experience was deceptive.

"You seem a little too young to be traveling alone."

"You seem a little too old."

Her voice was small and wan as she appeared to be. He chuckled warmly. "Perhaps I am."

"I know what you're thinking." She rested on her knees like a little roosted pigeon, dressed in loose plumage of humble earth kingdom greens. "I look like I can't handle being by myself."

"I wasn't thinking that."

"You wouldn't even let me pour my own cup of tea."

"I poured your tea," Iroh consoled, as the maiden kissed the confection introspectively, "because I wanted to, and for no other reason."

"People see me and think I'm weak. They want to take care of me, but I can take care of myself, by myself."

He was struck again by the smallness of the creature, her ignorance of life on earth, the utter youngness which was quickly eclipsing in his mind the ferocious strength contained in her. He felt a softening to the creature, a timid flame disrupting the temper of his heart. He smiled tenderly. "You sound like my nephew. Always thinking you need to do things on your own."

"Where is your nephew?," she ejaculated a kitten yawn, rearranging her smudged knees beneath her

"I've been tracking him, actually." He drank deeply.

"Is he lost?"

"Yes. A little bit. His life has recently changed and he's going through very difficult times. He's trying to figure out who he is and he ran away." He observed the child rocking on her feet, nodding deeply, extinguishing. He observed an unsightly depth of color smoldering beneath her eyes. "You seem unwell."

"I'm tired," she ejaculated a kitten yawn, rearranging her smudged knees beneath her. "So ... you're following him."

"I know he doesn't want me around right now but if he needs me, I'll be there."

The moon had risen over the crown of the drowsing girl, the night pouring out over the horizon, and her strange pale eyes drifted gradually closed. Iroh felt in his sympathy the departure of the child from the world. She appeared in many ways so much like his own child, like his nephew, a contradiction of ferocity and secret sweetness. He had moved around the fire from his seat across from her to her side. By her hip, bracing her, he arranged the dense half of his pack populated by folded fabrics and food, and exactly like a little child she unraveled into him. She smiled.

"Your nephew is very lucky," she murmured, a little hair pitch dark with vitality tumbling into Iroh's lap as she drifted away from him, "even if he doesn't know it ..."


End file.
